12 September, 2000

Sorry all, for missing the diary yesterday.

I can tell you the reason -- but I doubt you'll believe it. In fact, I'm having a hard time believing it, myself -- and I must confess to being a touch sheepish when I got in to work this morning.

The thing is, I spent the whole darn day playing computer games!

On the plus side, I became darned good at it. On the minus side, I didn't get to do any work. Not too bad for a balance sheet, huh?

Here's the how of it -- we were sitting around discussing our Olympic coverage. And we figured okay, as far as the stories go, we are doing fine. Ditto where the pictures are concerned -- in fact, short of making a movie, I don't see how we can use any more pictures on a website, or use them better (ideas, though, are always welcome). And we figured, too, that with WAP updates, SMS messages, live pop-up scoreboard, and commentary-chat, we have the instant information angle covered as well.

Trouble is, while all of the above is interesting, none of it qualifies as "fun". It is all pretty one-sided -- we put up stuff, you read or see it.

Which misses a very big point about the net, which in essence is about you DOING things. Which was when we thought, ah, games to play!

The result? 14 hours spent at the computer playing games. Evaluation, it is called -- at least, that is what I call it when the folk here ask me why I am goofing off.

It was all huge fun, though. Especially for someone like me who, besides chess has never played games on the computer (I tried a couple of the cricket games once, and found the darn things boring in the extreme, besides being very easy to manipulate), this came as a revelation.

Here's how one goes: You have the 110 metre hurdles track. You are given the world record, the Olympic record, and a qualifying time.

You click on the mouse, the runner takes off. From there on, you hit the sideways-pointing arrows to build speed, and the space bar to take the athlete over the hurdle. Which sounds simple, but as I found, it ain't -- time the jump too early and the athlete lands bang on the hurdle, time it late and she goes through it, either way, it slows things down, and you end up not meeting the qualifying time.

Took me about 13 tries to finally qualify for the Olympics! Yesssss!

Ummm, sorry if I sound like a kid here, but I am frankly feeling a bit light-headed after a day spent doing this thing. There were eight other games I was checking out as well, so....

Anyways, we figure this is the way we want to go -- an Olympic Gaming Zone, with five such games on it for you to play. Qualify, and you get to compete for the top five positions. Get to the top five, and hold your position through the Olympics, and on October 1, you get big-time goodies. The Rediff Olympics, you could call it.

Anyone have any other ideas we can implement?

Meanwhile, to get serious for a minute -- what is with the BCCI and Kapil Dev anyway?

In the first place, the BCCI announces that Kapil will be coach to Kenya.

Now then, in that announcement is implicit the fact that the BCCI is looking for change. Otherwise, why make a tournament-specific announcement, when Kapil is in fact on contract for two whole years?

So then -- granting the BCCI is looking for change in coach. Granting, too, that the negotiations now on with various candidates is proving long drawn-out -- which creates a short-term vacuum.

Why Kapil? Why an arrangement that leaves all concerned stripped of pride and self-respect?

The board has no self-respect left, after this. By talking to others, they have indicated that they are planning to remove Kapil. To go back to him now is to admit they haven't been able to cut much mustard with the other candidates. Further -- when dropping the likes of Azhar, Jadeja and company, the board went out of its way to explain that the axing was not on cricketing considerations. These players, the board elaborately explained, will be under considerable mental stress thanks to the allegations and raids, and therefore not in the proper frame of mind to play.

By that logic, is Kapil -- the man in the focus of the Manoj Prabhakar allegations, equally the focus of IT raids and CBI investigations -- in the right frame of mind to coach?

Actually, the answer -- NO -- came from the man himself, when he said in an interview just last month that he had had enough of the whole thing and was planning to disocciate from the game entirely.

Kapil -- whose sense of timing you can't fault -- is now paying the BCCI back for the angst heaped on him. Did you read his latest statement? "When I am ready, I will inform the BCCI whether I can go down to Chennai, and when."

The BCCI, having already swallowed its self-respect, can now swallow this as well, by way of dessert.

And for why? Because it is, by virtue of its non-professional nature, completely ignorant of the concept of forward planning.

After all, the fact that Kapil was being investigated has been common knowledge for more three months and more. That should have been time enough for any professional body to first decide its policy towards the man and then, if the policy was to change coaches, to identify and hire a replacement.

But that is not how the Board works. And that is why it finds itself in this position.

Then again, you could argue that the board never had any self-respect to lose.

Meanwhile, what of Kapil? From early this morning, we've been getting calls hinting that the man is likely to upstage the BCCI, and quit. That way, he can go out in glory, rather than face the inevitable axe once the board has located a replacement.

Prem

Mail Cricket Editor